Standing
in front of the Generaloberst-Dietl-Kaserne now renamed the Allgäu Kaserne and currently used by the Gebirgsartilleriebataillon 225. Named after Eduard Wohlrath Christian Dietl who served as a Generaloberst in World War II, commanding the 20th Mountain Army and ending up a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. The barracks were named in his honour in May 1964 and the following year his military rank "Generaloberst" was added to the name. In January 1982, on the occasion of the renaming of a street in Dietl's birthplace of Bad Aibling, the public battle began over the use of his name. In July 1987, a citizens' initiative in Kempten called for the renaming of "General Dietl-Straße" followed in February 1988 with Pax Christi calling for the renaming of the "Generaloberst-Dietl-Kaserne" in Füssen. Furious reactions followed wherein anyone who took a public position for its renaming came upon resistance in the form of anonymous calls, letters and even murders. The Petitionsausschuss of the Bundestage, on the other hand, recommended to raise awareness of the renaming of the barracks by informing the troops. A renaming would also be a contribution to the "reworking of the recent German past". On the other hand, the local CSU deputy, Kurt Rossmanith, deaclred how "Generaloberst Dietl was and still is a model for me in humanity and soldiery." On November 9, 1995, the then Federal Minister of Defence, Volker Rühe, finally decided to recruit the Generaloberst-Dietl-Kaserne in Füssen and the General-Kübler -Barracks in Mittenwald which met with bitter criticism from the comrades' circle of the mountain group. The building still displays the Second World War soldier on its façade belonging to the German mountain corps, part of the German armed forces specially trained and equipped for the battle in difficult terrain and under extreme climatic conditions. The German alpenkorps was the first large association of the German mountain group set up according to the Austro-Hungarian model in 1915, used primarily in the Alpine area and the Balkans in the First World War. The Reichswehr, Wehrmacht, and the Waffen-SS set up their own mountain groups and their successes were used by the Nazi regime as propaganda and sometimes overestimated or exaggerated so
that Generaloberst Dietdu (a Nazi member since 1921) was hailed by
Propagandaminister Goebbels as "the hero of Narvik." In the Second World War they would be involved in a series of war crimes such as the massacre on Kefalonia and, in this context, the tradition of the mountain group is accused of ignoring its own role in the Third Reich explaining the disquiet over such remaining artwork.During the war, a subcamp
of the Dachau concentration camp was located in the town. Steve
McQueen's motorcycle stunts and many other scenes in The Great Escape were filmed in and around the town.

St. Mang behind the wife and baby Drake Winston and the same spot in the film The Great Escape when James Coburn is seen in the cafe (built for the film) before the assassination of these German officers.

Richard Attenborough caught the Gestapo on Hutergaße

The train station that appears in the film when David McCallum is killed on the tracks, enabling Attenborough to escape, was demolished recently in 2015.

Neuschwanstein

Hitler with Hitlerjugend and today, visiting with wife and son.On August 12, 1933 Hitler took part in a Richard Wagner Celebration at Neuschwanstein, at which he was given the freedom of Hohenschwangau. Expressing his gratitude in an address, Hitler described himself, as he did in regard to all great Germans, as having consummated the plans of Ludwig II. He expressed his conviction that despite all criticism of these structures built by Ludwig II, the fertilisation of the arts and the stimulation of tourism had nonetheless given rise to much good, which meant that the work of the King deserved recognition: “It was the protest of a genius against wretched parliamentarian mediocrity. Today we have translated this protest into action and finally eliminated this regime.”

Neuswchwanstein castle was used by the Nazi party as a depository of pillaged artwork from all over Europe, primarily France. The artwork stored at Neuschwanstein was catalogued and evacuated by one of the great museum curators of the 20th century, James Rorimer, functioning as a "monuments man" -- one of the many US and British art experts appointed to a special wartime military section charged with protecting and then repatriating art stolen by the Nazis. Near the end of the war gold was stored there also. In 1945, the ϟϟ had plans to blow up the castle to prevent the Allies from retrieving the contents. This did not come to pass; eventually Nazi forces surrendered an undamaged castle and contents to the Allies.

Two paintings of Neuschwanstein castle by Hitler himself. In a 2015 auction organised by Weidler Auctioneers of Nuremberg, that on the right was sold to a Chinese buyer for £71,000 (100,000 euros). Schönau

Near Berchtesgaden in Schönau is Haus Köppeleck, still in operation since its time as a Kinderlandverschickung during the war, as shown in Jugend im Reich
(34) from 1942. Groups like the Black Forest Society
(Schwarzwaldverein), a self-described ‘Fatherlandish and nationalist’
hiking club with local chapters throughout the region, organised at
Whitsuntide hikes here as it was the birthplace of Leo Schlageter.
Schlageter had been shot in 1923 by French occupation authorities in the
Ruhr. Already a nationalist hero, Schlageter soon took his place among
the pantheon of Nazi martyrs. By including pilgrimages to his hometown
within the annual calendar of events, the Black Forest Society
contributed to the creation of a Nazi politics of public memory.

Schlageter had been shot in 1923 by French occupation authorities in the Ruhr. Already a nationalist hero, Schlageter soon took his place among the pantheon of Nazi martyrs. By including pilgrimages to his hometown within the annual calendar of events, the Black Forest Society contributed to the creation of a Nazi politics of public memory. Moreover, like the NSDAP itself, the Black Forest Society claimed that it fought against the spirit of class and happily repeated Nazi slogans such as ‘public good before private profit’. Additionally, the monthly journals were filled with endless photographs of members’ processions through swastika-bedecked streets, which reinforced the Nazi message.

Semmens (86)

Schlageter's grave then and what's left of it today. After his execution Schlageter became a hero to some sections of the German population. Immediately after his death a Schlageter Memorial Society was formed, which agitated for the creation of a monument to honour him. The German Communist Party sought to debunk the emerging mythology of Schlageter by circulating a speech by Karl Radek portraying him as an honourable but misguided figure. It was the Nazi party who most fully exploited the Schlageter story. Hitler refers to him in Mein Kampf. Rituals were constructed to commemorate his death, and in 1931 the Memorial Society succeeded in getting a monument erected near the site of his execution. This was a giant cross placed amid sunken stone rings. Other smaller memorials were also created. After 1933 Schlageter became one of the principal heroes of the Nazi regime. The Nazis renamed the Haus der Technik in Königsberg the Schlageterhaus. Hanns Johst, the Nazi playwright, wrote Schlageter (1933), a heroic drama about his life. It was dedicated to Hitler, and was performed on his first birthday in power as a theatrical manifesto of Nazism. The line "when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun", often misattributed to Nazi leaders, derives from this play. The original line is slightly different: "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning," "Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). It is spoken by another character in conversation with the young Schlageter. Several important military ventures were also named for him, including the Jagdgeschwader 26 Schlageter fighter-wing of the Luftwaffe, and the naval vessel Albert Leo Schlageter. His name was also given as a title to two SA groups, the SA-Standarte 39 Schlageter at Düsseldorf and SA-Standarte 142 Albert Leo Schlageter at Lörrach. An army barracks on the south side of Freiburg was also named after him.

The Hotel Schiffmeister in Schönau on the banks of the Königssee during the Nazi eraand today

In 1939 and during my 2017 Grade 11 Geography trip. Speer relates how

before
we reached our destination, the Schiffmeister restaurant, a band of
enthusiasts began excitedly following our group; they had belatedly
realized whom they had encountered. Hitler in the lead, almost running,
we barely reached the door before we were overtaken by the swelling
crowd. We sat over coffee and cake while the big square outside waited.
Hitler waited until police reinforcements had been brought up before he
entered the open car, which had been driven there to meet us. The front
seat was folded back, and he stood beside the driver, left hand resting
on the windshield, so that even those standing at a distance could see
him. Two men of the escort squad walked in front of the car, three more
on either side, while the car moved at a snail's pace through the
throng. I sat as usual in the jump seat close behind Hitler and shall
never forget that surge of rejoicing, the ecstasy reflected in so many
faces. Wherever Hitler went during those first years of his rule,
wherever his car stopped for a short time, such scenes were repeated.
The mass exultation was not called forth by rhetoric or suggestion, but
solely by the effect of Hitler's presence. Whereas individuals in the
crowd were subject to this influence only for a few seconds at a time,
Hitler himself was eternally exposed to the worship of the masses. At
the time. I admired him for nevertheless retaining his informal habits
in private.

The Bodensee fleet consisting of the Deutschland, Augsburg, Ravensburg, Baden and Allgäu with the Säntis and Altmann mountains of the Alps in the background then and now. On the right is Hitler on the banks of the Obersee.

On the left features a propaganda photo of Hitler in May 1933 and later, in uniform

Eva Braun practising gymnastics where the Königsbach river flows into Königssee and the view from atop the waterfall with her sister Gretl in 1940 in one of Braun's home movies.

Tegernsee with Rottach in the background. Tegernsee is where Hitler would often retreat, and it was not until April 2016 that the town of Tegernsee stripped Adolf Hitler of honorary citizenship after 83 years. Hitler’s honour was revoked by Conservative mayor Johannes Hagn and the sixteen town councillors after the former stated that "[i]t took so long because we didn’t actually know if he was still on the books as an honorary citizen and it turned out he was... We thought the honour had died off with him but that turned out not to be the case so we had to officially expunge him from the books." During the war the stretch of water became known as ‘Bonzo See’ – Lake Big Shot – because of the number of Nazi chiefs who bought holiday homes there. At the end of the war the hotels in Tegernsee were used as auxiliary hospitals. Around 12,000 wounded and civilian war refugees were accommodated in Tegernsee alone. During their retreat, troops of the 17th ϟϟ Panzergrenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen" were persuaded by the convalescent Major Hannibal von Lüttichau not to settle in the place, but to take off via Kreuth in the direction of Austria. He then went with a white flag to the approaching artillerymen of the US Army and could convince them of the withdrawal of the Waffen-ϟϟ, so that the place and the inhabitants and refugees were not shot at.

Bad Wiessee

It was on Tegernsee here where, now
known as the Hotel Lederer am See, the Hotel Hanselbauer saw
Hitler personally arrest the leader of the SA, Ernst Roehm. From Alan
Bullock's Hitler: A Study in Tyranny(303):

In
the early morning of the 30th a fast-moving column of cars tore down
the road from Munich to Wiessee where Rohm and Heines were still asleep
in their beds at the Hanselbauer Hotel. The accounts of what happened
at Wiessee are contradictory. Heines, the S.A. Obergrappenfuhrer for
Silesia, a convicted murderer who was found sleeping with one of Rohm's
young men, is said to have been dragged out and shot on the road. Other
accounts say he was taken to Munich with Rohm and shot there.

The interior of the Wandelhalle

Lindau

Adolf Hitler Straße then and now, renamed Maximilianstrasse. Lindau is located near the meeting point of the Austrian, German and Swiss borders and is nestled on the lake in front of Austria's Pfänder mountain. In 1922 the independent districts of Aeschach, Hoyren and Reutin merged with the Lindau district. Its Oberbürgermeister, Ludwig Siebert, was later appointed the first Nazi mayor within Bavaria and at the beginning of the Nazi regime in 1933 became the Bavarian minister-president. Lindau served as a garrison for military pioneers including divisions of the 19th infantry regiment and the 488th infantry replacement battalion.

From a Nazi-era postcard with Adolf-Hitler-Straße stamped out. It was here in Lindau that many landing pioneer units of the Wehrmacht were put up, receiving their training on and around Lake Constance. After the war, Lindau suffered the humiliation of falling to French troops on April 30, 1945 who occupied Lindau without a fight. The town and the county were separated from the rest of American-occupied Bavaria as part of the French occupation zone and received a state special status. During the next ten years, the area served as a bridge between the French occupation zones in Germany and Austria. It was not until September 1, 1955, that Lindau was re-integrated into the Free State of Bavaria.

During the Third Reich and today

Mangfallbrücke

In 1935 and today

The
Mangfallbrücke is part of the federal motorway 8 and between Munich
and Rosenheim north of Weyarn the Mangfalltal. The 288 metre-long
continuous girder bridge was completed in January 1936 and was one of
the first large bridges of the autobahn network.

Gradually
the network of highways spread. They followed routes that engineers had
previously claimed impassable, for example across broad moors like the
south shore of Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria. Long viaducts like the Mangfall
bridge, 200 feet high, were personally selected by Hitler from seventy
competing designs, for their simple but solid lines: "What we’re
building," he explained, "will still be standing long after we’ve passed
on." He toured the sites and spoke with the workers. "When I’m as old
as you," he flattered one seventy-year-old labourer at Darmstadt, "I’d
like to be able to work like you now." In November 1936, he gave orders
that the Reich’s western frontiers were to be marked on the autobahns by
monuments 130 feet high. Hitler's War (21)

One of the first great bridges to be tackled
was the Mangfall Bridge near München, with a length of approximately 300
metres and a height of approximately 60 metres above the base of the valley.
From a contest which resulted in about 70 entrants, The Leader decided on the
design to be used, and thereby determined the type of major bridge which
afterwards was to be built at various other places. The lines and shapes of the
constructions which The Leader himself determined are clear and simple, and
at the same time ambitious and daring. Besides the shape, his decision is
greatly influenced by the question of the soundness of the construction. Cheap
construction parts, such as hollow pillars and pylons, are rejected by The
Leader as they raise doubts about the unlimited durability.

Schloss Linderhof

Hitler
in 1935 at the entrance to the smallest of the three palaces built by
Ludwig II of Bavaria and the only one which he lived to see completed. Hitler had had a rather ambivalent relationship with the castles and their creator who, as a strong individualist with apparent homoerotic tendencies, did not fit into the ideology of the national socialists. Ludwig II's royal palaces were however unaffected during the Second World War by combat and bombing and as early as 1946 they were again accessible to the public. Hitler himself had declared on August 12, 1933 whilst taking part in a Richard Wagner Celebration at Neuschwanstein that

despite all criticism of these structures built by Ludwig II, the fertilisation of the arts and the stimulation of tourism had nonetheless given rise to much good, which meant that the work of the King deserved recognition: “It was the protest of a genius against wretched parliamentarian mediocrity. Today we have translated this protest into action and finally eliminated this regime.”

The bedroom and the schloß and its grounds during the Third Reich era

The Eisenbahnbrücke Prien-Aschau under construction in 1939 and today.

Mittenwald

The town rathaus was built in 1939. The paintings remain on the façade save for the swastikas.

The Obermarkt then and now. In the 1930s, Mittenwald became the garrison and training centre of the Wehrmacht mountain group. It was here in Mittenwald that one of the "evacuation transports" from the Dachau concentration camp ended at the end of April 1945. After the war Mittenwald belonged to the American occupation zone. From April 1946 until the end of January 1952, the military administration established a DP camp for Jewish and Ukrainian Displaced Persons (DPs). Among the refugees were some homeless foreigners and members of the Vlasov army, Poles, Belarusians and Russians among them. The East European DPs were placed in the mountain huntsmen camp and in the Luttensee camp (today's Luttensee barracks), and some Mittenwalder hotels were requisitioned for the Jewish DPs. The White Russians erected a monument to the participants of the Sluzker insurrection near the Luthenese Barracks. From 2002-2009 leftist antifa demonstrators protested against commemorations by veterans of the Wehrmacht mountain group on Pentecost at the memorial on the Hohenbrendten.

The Ludendorff Kaserne in 1940 and today. Ludendorff had owned an holiday house in the neighbouring town of Klais and may have passed through the barracks with its vast mountain tours in the Karwendel. On January 16, 1938, cornerstones for the first Adolf Hitler Schools were laid here at Mittenwald, as well as Waldbröl near Cologne, Hesselberg, and at various other locations. Astonishingly, in May 1964 the barracks were renamed after General Ludwig Kübler, a German General of the Mountain Troops during the war who was executed as a war criminal in Yugoslavia in 1947. It was not until November 1995 that Volker Rühe, then the German Minister of Defence, changed the name "General-Kübler-Kaserne" into "Karwendel-Kaserne".

This was the site of the Winter Olympic Games in 1936. After
the cancellation of Sapporo and St. Moritz the V. Winter Olympics
(1940) were also to be held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, but they were cancelled because of the Second World War. On January 1, 1935 the independent market towns of Garmisch and Partenkirchen joined to become Garmisch-Partenkirchen on account of the subsequent Olympic Games.
On September 25, 1935, time began as a garrison of the Wehrmacht with
the first groundbreaking ceremony for the Jägerkaserne and later the
artillery barracks. Hitler had taken
full advantage of the staging of the 1936 Winter Olympic Games in
Garmisch- Partenkirchen and the summer games in Berlin to divert the
attention of the German public and the international community as an
whole from his military and political activities, in particular his
goal of extending the military sovereignty of the Reich to the Rhineland
and of prolonging the one-year compulsory military service to two
years, having earlier chosen the shorter term of service only to make
its introduction politically and psychologically more acceptable. Below left shows Hitler
arriving at the start of the Games on February 6, 1936 in the new
Skiing Stadium. According to the usual practices at the Olympic Games,
these were conducted under the auspices of the head of state of the host
nation, meaning Hitler in this case. After the participating nations
had ceremoniously marched into the Stadium at 11:00 a.m., Hitler spoke
the following words “with resounding clarity,” as the German News Bureau
phrased it:

I hereby declare the Fourth Winter Olympics of 1936 in Garmisch- Partenkirchen open to the public!

Later he himself congratulated every victorious German athlete by sending a telegram.

Hitler saluting the athletes from the balcony of the Olympic House during the opening ceremony. On December 3, 1935 the Nazi government issued an order to “remove all signs and posters relating to the Jewish question” in the region of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, so as not to endanger international support for the Berlin Games. Prior to the Winter Games, the Garmisch-Partenkirchen town council passed an order to expel all Jews in its jurisdiction, but it wait until after the Olympics to implement the antisemitic decree. Anti-Jewish signs were temporarily removed. Germany also hosted the Summer Olympics the same year in Berlin. 1936 is the last year in which the Summer and Winter Games were both held in the same country (the cancelled 1940 games would have been held in Japan, with that country likewise hosting the Winter and Summer games). In the six months between the Winter and Summer Games, the Nazis prepared to host a variety of athletic and cultural events and selected the German athletes who would participate.

Reliefs remaining from the timeAfter 1945 the recreation facilities of the US Army (later Armed Forces Recreation Centre) were used on the site of numerous units.

The ski run at the Olympia Skischanze in 1936 and as it appears today

The rathaus in town, then and now, constructed by Oswald Bieber by 1936. Bieber was responsible for a number of Nazi buildings including the Munich-based SS-Standarte 1 „Deutschland“ and the Haus des Deutschen Rechts. Ironically, today the town's police chief has declared that "the blacks are now in charge"of the town as 'refugees' from Africa have taken over the Abrams complex, a former US Army site that now houses around 250 supposed asylum seekers which the mayor in her appeal for help from the authorities is claiming is affecting tourism and the health of residents.

Frühlingstraße

The Bräustüberl in 1937 Hotel Husar in 1939 and todaySchloss Elmau

Hammersbach

Haus Almenrausch and Hotel Höllentalklamm during the Third Reich

Oberammergau

Contemporary scholar James Shapiro writes that “Oberammergau is justly celebrated as one of the few places in the world where theatre still matters.” The Bavarian play began with a vow made in 1633: villagers would perform the Passion Play every ten years if God would spare them from the plague which had ravaged neighbouring towns and threatened to consume them. With few exceptions, they’ve kept their pledge with God, and this devotion had made Oberammergau, a town just southwest of Munich, an international phenomenon. Oberammergau attracts a capacity crowd of over 400,000 visitors every ten years (with applications for tickets nearing 4 million). No expense is spared in its lavish production, but verisimilitude is important for Oberammergau: no makeup or wigs are allowed onstage; actors must have been born in Oberammergau or reside in the city for twenty years before they’re eligible to perform; and until 1990, female actors had to be under 35 and single.

In 1934 the play gained infamy for the dubious honour of hosting Hitler as he courted the popular vote for the institution of a new office, Führer and Reich Chancellor. Many of the actors in principle roles (excepting Judas) were already party Nazis, and voting records indicate that almost 90% of the town’s inhabitants favoured Hitler in the general election. In 1942 Hitler would go so far as to claim that the play showed Pilate as a man of “superior race” while the Sanhedrin’s call for crucifixion revealed the whole “muck and mire of Jewry.” However, forced to choose between guns and God, Hitler closed the play in 1940 to build a munitions factory nearby.

The Hotel Wittelbach then and now, shown sporting swastikas. In 1932 the former BavarianPrime Minister Max Streibl was born here.

On August 13, 1934, Hitler and his large entourage visited the town to attend the 300th anniversary of the Passion play and addressed a large crowd from the Hotel Wittelbach's balcony.

The flags have changed in front of the Forstamt with the war memorial gone, although the Kofel behind on the right remains unchanged

The theatre produced by the Nazis, showing the Nazi eagle on thefaçade and today. In his Table Talk Hitler declared that

One
of our most important tasks will be to save future generations from a
similar political fate and to maintain for ever watchful in them a
knowledge of the menace of Jewry. For this reason alone it is vital that
the Passion Play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace
of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what
happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a
Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands out like a
firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry.

Feldberg

Outside of one of the buildings near the Feldberg Ski Resort the Nazi eagle remains, as does the Bismarckdenkmal nearby

The Naturfreundehaus when it hosted troops of Hitlerjugend and Feldsee then and now

Kempten

Also in the Allgäu is this town where Hitler visited a number of times, speaking here at the Kornhaus on March 24, 1928. His July 30, 1932 speech produced the following line used as a Wochenspruch later in the opening weeks of the war: “I do not believe in any right that is not protected by force." Between
1943 and 1945 the concentration camp Kottern-Weidach, subcamp of the
Dachau concentration camp, was installed in the nearby Weidach for 1000
to 2000 prisoners. Concentration camp prisoners were accommodated, among
other things, in the livestock nursery used for livestock. They had to
carry out forced labour
for the Messerschmitt factory in the production of aircraft. A further
outside camp had already existed at Keselstrasse 14, where between 500
and 600 prisoners had to work for U. Sachse KG. The production of
warring parts was shifted to Kempten, because the large cities like
Munich were more threatened by air raids than the rural Allgäu. Even
the few Jews in Kempten were not spared. Jewish shops were boycotted and
closed, almost all Jews were deported to concentration camps and
murdered there. In Kempten, only two Jewish women and eight so-called
half-Jews experienced the end of the war.

St.-Lorenz-Kirche then and now. Kempten had been bombed from 1942 to 1945. On 23 October 1942 British and American planes threw 200 firebombs on the station Kempten-Hegge. Southwest of Kempten, Allied and German airplanes fought on July 18, 1944, and the Allies attacked Kempten the following day. Bombardments were made, where Messerschmitt's production was housed. 29 people were killed and some houses destroyed. On 3 August 1944 bombers attacked the southern Illerbrücken as well as the nearby spinning and weaving mill. In addition to destroyed houses there were also death sacrifices. On 22 February, 12 and 16 April 1945, the Allies attacked the railway station, as well as defense and armament systems, among them also the barrack barracks were destroyed. The largest number of bombshots were reported in July and August 1944, with 146 dead and 79 seriously injured in these bomb hits. Even today, in the little cultivated south of Kempten, many bomb centers in the district of Adelharz remind of these bombshells. The building fabric of Kempten was destroyed by 1.8 per cent during bomb attacks. By comparison, during the air raids on Munich about 50 percent of the city was destroyed. On April 27, 1945, US troops from the north occupied the city, liberating more than 4,000 foreign workers and political prisoners in Kempten and its surrounding area. National Socialist rule was put to an end.

Oberaudorf

Within Rosenheim kreis
is the the birthplace of Pope Benedict XVI's mother, German politician
Edmund Stoiber and footballer Bastian Schweinsteiger of Bayern Munich.
The burgtor then and now. The town was affected in the last days of the Second World War by air raids as its defences posed the last real German strength faced by the Americans.

Herrsching am Ammersee

Herrsching am Ammersee on the east shore of the Ammersee southwest of Munich is usually the starting point of trips to Andechs Abbey. This, one of the most impressive Nazi eagles remaining in Germany, is found on the façade of the former Reichsfinanzschule (finance school). In 1945 and 46 the school was converted into a POW hospital and rehab facility for soldiers who had lost limbs.

Chiemsee

The Raststätte Chiemsee, the first large service area on the Autobahn, since 2011 the Klinik Medical Park Chiemseeblick (Psychosomatik). It is located on the A 8, the Chiemsee motorway, between Munich and Salzburg in Bernau directly on the south bank of the Chiemsee. The Rasthaus was opened on August 27, 1937 with 520 seats. In 1942 the building was completed, but then only used as an hospital. The Munich architect Fritz Norkauer oriented himself to the large Chiemgau courtyards with their sloping saddle roofs. Fritz Todt supervised the construction personally. The site became so popular as an excursion site that it had to be closed temporarily in the summer of 1939 because of overcrowding. The restaurant was designed for 350 persons, the terrace of the café for 1300 guests and the outdoor swimming pool for 1450 people. It took 800 workers a year to build the rest-stop on the lake shore given the difficulty of the site. For the main building, 1436 to 14 meter long reinforced concrete piles were placed in the alluvium. The 250-meter-long building also stands in watertight concrete tubs, so that would not flood in the spring. In its three wings was a restaurant, bathing establishment and an hotel with 53 rooms. The house technology was modern with the Radiolautsprecher behind the wall lamps, exhaust air slots in the ceilings and the radiators in the windows. There was also an extension for yachts and excursion steamers. South of the motorway, connected with the rest house by an underpass were, among other things, gas station, workshops, apartments for 160 employees, laundry, butcher and heating centre. On the terrace is the Bronze statue Die Schauende by Fritz Klimsch.

Hitler and, returning from his meeting with Hitler at the Obersalzberg that led to the Munich Agreement, Neville Chamberlain (between Herbert von Dirksen and Joachim von Ribbentrop) on September 15, 1938.

The Leader is regularly informed of the progress of the work by the Inspector General. In the course of these briefings The Leader intervenes decisively in many details to influence the basic attitude of the coworkers to this work according to his will. In these discussions over the details, it has happened again and again that a decision made by The Leader has proved itself to be the only possible solution in the course of time. An example of this was the decision about the lines of the section on the southern bank of the Chiemsee in Upper Bavaria. Between this lake and the rising mountains, there is a moor which is several kilometres wide. The crossing of this moor had caused severe difficulties for the railroad. The first design of the line for the Reich Autobahn avoided the moor in a wide arc to the side of the bank towards the south. The Leader did not agree to this line, which offered the road neither a view of the lake nor a view of the mountains. He requested that further and more thorough investigations should be made to determine whether a possibility could still be found to put the road closer to the lake. At his instigation further extensive drilling was carried out in the vicinity of the lake. To everyone's great surprise these further investigations revealed a rocklike ledge close to the lake. This ledge was just wide enough to enable the road to be built close to the side of the lake in accordance with The Leader's wishes.

On the wall outside the entrance is this plaque offering its own history of the site:

The Resthouse on Lake Chiemsee was designed by order of Adolf Hitler under supervision of the General Inspector for German roads, Dr. Todt, interior and exterior by Prof. Norhauer. Construction was in the hands of the Supreme Construction Office of the Reichsautobahnen in Munich. Construction was commenced on 3 July 1937 and the Resthouse was opened 1 September 1938.

Schloß Herrenchiemsee

It
was at the Kloster Herrenchiemsee, founded in around 765, that the
eleven leaders of the western German states sent delegates to this small
island in 1949 to draft the 'Grundgesetz', or German constitution. An
only slightly modified version of this 'Grundgesetz' would later go on
to become the 'Verfassung,' or the German constitution as it is known
today, and a museum dedicated to its creation can be found within the
Old Palace.

[T]he constitutional discussions at Herrenchiemsee and in the parliamentary council proved contentious as the renunciation of independent armed forces shifted the defence of the new state to the victorious powers or to an international security system whose reliability remained unpredictable. The Social Democratic Party’s demand for a complete outlawing of war collided in principle with the Christian Democratic Party’s advocacy of the possibility of a national defence. The result was an ambiguous compromise, which in article 26, paragraph 1, declared unconstitutional all “acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression.” Barring special permission from the federal government, the production of weapons of war was likewise forbidden, while a right to conscientious objection to serving in the military was written into the constitution. The first constitution of the GDR also proclaimed the principle of peacefulness, although secret remilitarisation by means of the people’s police was already under way.

Jarausch (36-37)

Looking across at Fraueninsel in 1939 and today

Herrenchiemsee, a replica (although only the central section was ever built) of Louis XIV's Palace of Versailles, France, which was meant to outdo its predecessor in scale and opulence - for instance, at 98 meters the Hall of Mirrors and its adjoining Halls of War and Peace is slightly longer than the original. The palace is located on the Herren Island in the middle of the Chiemsee Lake. Most of the palace was never completed once the king ran out of money, and Ludwig lived there for only 10 days in October 1885, less than a year before his mysterious death. It is interesting to note that tourists come from France to view the recreation of the famous Ambassadors' Staircase as the original Ambassadors' Staircase at Versailles was demolished in 1752.

Hitler
in the stunning Grosse Spiegelgalerie (Great Hall of Mirrors). This
tunnel of light runs the length of the garden (98m, or 10m longer than
that in Versailles). It sports 52 candelabra and 33 great glass
chandeliers with 7000 candles, which my tour guide informed me took 70 servants half an hour to
light.

Also within the palace is the König-Ludwig II-Museum, where one can see the king’s
christening and coronation robes, the Speisezimmer shown here then and now, more blueprints of megalomaniac
buildings that would inspire Hitler, and his death mask. Here I am beside it and Wagner's.Starnberger See

In Tutzing on Lake Starnberg is the former home of General Ludendorff. Retired General of the Infantry, Ludendorff celebrated his seventieth birthday in this house on April 9, 1935. He and his co-conspirator of the 1923 Putsch, Hitler, had not been on friendly terms since 1925. Although their ideas did coincide, each felt superior to the other. General Ludendorff had been one of the parties essentially responsible for spreading the legend of the “stab in the back.” This propagandist allegation had it that the munitions workers’ strike in October 1918, just as the German Army was purportedly at the threshold of victory, had been the cause of the dishonourable defeat of the invincible German forces. Although it might be understandable that Hitler and others who had fought in the war held this view, there is no excuse for Ludendorff’s support of such an obvious fallacy. He had not experienced the war from a corporal’s perspective, as the later dictatorhad, but been instrumental in waging it as Quartermaster General from 1916 to 1918. In September of 1918, together with Hindenburg, he had petitioned the German Government to conclude an armistice within twenty-four hours in order to circumvent the otherwise inevitable military collapse. However, this did not prevent him from subsequently claiming, against his own better knowledge, that Marxists, Jews, Freemasons, and the Catholic Church had connived to bring about Germany’s collapse.

Ludendorff's grave in Tutzing

In 1923, Ludendorff and Hitler had been on the same side; from 1925 Ludendorff rejected his former companion as being not sufficiently radical; strange as this may sound today, he viewed him as an “ultramontane” and a Judenknecht (slave to the Jews). Ludendorff’s attitude naturally rankled Hitler, and his vanity would not allow that anyone in Germany of standing or reputation was not wholly—and publicly—supportive. Moreover, he intended to have Ludendorff enter into Valhalla when he died, just as he had sent Hindenburg to the great hall dedicated to the war heroes in Norse mythology. Thus he enlisted all of his powers of persuasion to move Ludendorff to desist and adopt a modus vivendi of mutual respect. A reconciliation of sorts had come about between the two former comrades in arms by the time of Ludendorff’s death in 1937; however, in 1935 Hitler’s attempts in this direction were fruitless despite his belief that his foe would finally come to view him as Germany’s saviour for having reinstituted military service. Consequently he issued an “order” on April 8 in which he lauded Ludendorff as the “greatest German commander in the World War.” This “Order of the Führer and Reich Chancellor”—no one was quite sure to whom it was addressed—read as follows:

Tomorrow, on April 9, General Ludendorff is celebrating his seventieth birthday. With sentiments of deepest gratitude, the German Volk recalls on this occasion the immortal accomplishments of its greatest commander in the World War. In the grasp of this sentiment of a national debt of gratitude, I order that all state buildings exhibit flags on April 9. Adolf Hitler

On that day Hitler had an honour guard appointed to the celebrant and dispatched the Reich Minister of Defence, von Blomberg, and the Chief of Army Command, von Fritsch, to relay his congratulations in Tutzing. Blomberg was also instructed to present the marshal’s baton to Ludendorff, but the latter, the victorious commander per se, rejected the appointment. Naturally the German public heard nothing of this affront, although it was rather obvious that the reports on the birthday festivities in Tutzing made not a single mention of the Chancellor. Following the “order” of April 8 and the military favours Hitler had bestowed upon Ludendorff, the absence of any word of thanks from the latter did appear curious.

The site of Ludwig II's mysterious death

On the afternoon of June 13 1886, Ludwig, accompanied by his personal physician Dr Gudden, strolled within the grounds of the castle. They were accompanied by two attendants. On their return Gudden expressed optimism to other doctors concerning the treatment of his royal patient. Following dinner, at around 6 PM, Ludwig asked Gudden to accompany him on a further walk, this time through the Schloß Berg parkland along the shore of Lake Starnberg. Gudden agreed; the walk may even have been his suggestion, and he told the aides not to accompany them. His words were ambiguous (Es darf kein Pfleger mitgehen, "No attendant may come along") and whether they were meant to follow at a discreet distance is not clear. The two men were last seen at about 18.30; they were due back at 20.00 but never returned. After searches were made for more than two hours by the entire castle staff in a gale with heavy rain, at 22.30 that night, the bodies of both the King and von Gudden were found, head and shoulders above the shallow water near the shore. The King's watch had stopped at 6.54. Gendarmes patrolling the park had heard and seen nothing. Ludwig's death was officially ruled a suicide by drowning, but the official autopsy report indicated that no water was found in his lungs. Ludwig was a very strong swimmer in his youth, the water was approximately waist-deep where his body was found, and he had not expressed suicidal feelings during the crisis. Gudden's body showed blows to the head and neck and signs of strangulation, leading to the suspicion that he was strangled although there is no evidence to prove this.

Aufkirchen

Raising the May Pole then and now on the corner of Kirchstraße and Zugspitzstraße in this district of Berg

Lambacher Hof

Another favourite of Hitler's was the Lambacher Hof on the Chiemsee and which has changed very little since.

Hitler usually ordered preparations for the drive to "the mountain"-Obersalzberg. We rode over
dusty highways in several open cars; the autobahn to Salzburg did not
exist in those days, although it was being built on a priority basis.
Usually the motorcade stopped for coffee in a village inn at
Lambach
am Chiemsee, which served delicious pastries that Hitler could scarcely
ever resist. Then the passengers in the following cars once more
swallowed dust for two hours, for the column rode in close file.

Speer (46) Inside the Third Reich

Ordensburg Sonthofen

Ordensburg Sonthofen was started in 1934. The school was designed by architect Hermann Giesler and was finished ready for the first students two years later. The school was to receive and teach students in their third school year and then afterwards send them to Marienburg in East Prussia for their final year. On November 21, 1937 Hitler attended the inauguration of the Ordensburg Sonthofen in the Allgäu, which was the third to open its gates. There, before all the regional and district Nazi Party leaders assembled, Hitler delivered a two-hour “secret speech” on “the structure and organisation of the leadership of the Volk” (Volksführung) in which Hitler presented an overview of his version of German history over the last three hundred to four hundred years. He continuously attempted to substantiate his claims with numbers, carelessly juggling enormous figures (the majority of which were incorrect). Needless to say, he could not resist citing his favourite historical claim that of the 18.5 million Germans at the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, only 3.6 million survived. Further “historical observations” on his part culminated in a comparison of the relations between the people of Austria and Prussia and the similar bonds that existed between the English and the German people. He explained these ties in the following manner:

Since in international life there are only natural, sober interests, it should be based neither on gratitude nor on family connections. Family connections were as useless in preserving Prussia and Austria from war as they were for Germany and England. In Europe, we have more difficult obstacles to overcome than those, for instance, that exist for England—which needed only its naval supremacy to occupy large living spaces with relatively little loss of blood.Nonetheless: we had Europe once before. We lost it only because our leadership lacked the initiative that would have been necessary to not only maintain our position on a long- term basis but also to expand it.

At the end of his “secret speech,” Hitler expatiated upon the requirement of political leaders in addition to blind obedience: bravery.

Old Germany was overthrown because it did not possess this zealous blind will, did not have this confidence and this serenity. New Germany will be victorious because it integrates these virtues and at present has already integrated them in an extremely difficult struggle. I know quite well that this is independent of the individual. I know quite well that, were anything to happen to me today, the next one would take my place and continue in the same fashion, just as zealously; because that, too, is part of this Movement.Just as it is not possible to instantly turn a political bourgeois association into a fighting group of heroes, it will be equally impossible to ever turn this Movement, that was built up from the very beginning on courage and initiative, into a bourgeois association. That is also the future task above all of these schools: to conduct this test of courage over and over again, to break with the opinion that only the soldier must be brave. Whoever is a political leader is always a soldier too! And whoever lacks bravery cannot be a soldier. He must be prepared for action at all times. In the beginning, courage had to be the basic prerequisite for someone to find his way to the party—and it really was, otherwise no one came. Today we have to install artificial obstacles, artificial trenches over which the person has to jump. That is where he now has to prove whether he is brave. Because if he is not brave, he is of no use to us.

However, by the beginning of WWII, training was downsized and towards the end of the war it was used as a military hospital.Bad Tölz

A parade of SA men with ski equipment marching down Marktstrasse in 1932. This was the site on July 6 1932 of Hitler's first genuine campaign speeches aimed at the presidential election on July 31.

When
the Bavarian resort of Bad Tölz mistakenly included its limitations on
‘non-Aryan’ spa guests within a brochure it sent to a prospective
visitor from the Netherlands, it hurried to assure him that such
restrictions did not apply to foreigners.

Semmens (147)

When American General Patton was made military governor of Bavaria, he set
up his HQ in the former SS officer training school in Bad Tölz. On 22
September he blotted his copy book by appointing Nazis to administrative
roles within his Bavarian command and marginalising their criminality –
all in defiance of JCS 1067. He backtracked a little, saying that he
was employing Nazis because he needed to retain his own men to fight,
and because they hadn’t yet found anyone better. A week later,
Eisenhower relieved him of his command.

MacDonogh (229)

Wasserburg

The Brucktor in the 1930s and today

Wörishofen

Geromillerhaus after a plane crash, with American troops marching past after the war, and today

Oberstdorf

Located in the Oberallgäu, the Alpenhotel Schönblick, shown flying the Nazi flag and today, is in Germany's southernmost village

Siegsdorf

The Gasthof Alte Post in 1936 with swastika-bedecked maypole. Siegsdorf had been the home of Ernst von Salomon, a member of the Organisation Consul who had received a five year prison sentence in 1922 for his part in the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau – he provided a car for the assassins. In 1927, he received another prison sentence for an attempted Feme murder (paramilitary "self-justice"), and was pardoned by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg after a few months – he had not killed the severely wounded victim, Wagner, when he pleaded for his life, which was noted by the court. He was later interrogated after the war by the Americans.

The Americans believed they had a case against the writer Ernst von Salomon, and he tells us what it was like to be at the receiving end. They came for him at 6.00 a.m. at his home in Siegsdorf near Salzburg where he lived with his mistress, Ille Gotthelft. Two men called Murphy and Sullivan told him that he was to be interrogated across the border in Kitzbühel. They told Salomon it was because he was ‘a big Nazi’. When Ille protested that she was Jewish, they took her as well. Even if the two men had no knowledge of who Salomon was on their arrival, they could have gleaned it as they went through the books in his workroom. It was clear that they assumed that only a Nazi would have been involved in the killing of the Jewish foreign minister Walther Rathenau in 1922. His mistress’s protests must have been seen as at best irrelevant, at worst a lie. She suffered for her temerity, and was only released when she came close to death though sickness. ... He was questioned by a German-speaker who revealed that his parents were artists in Dresden, and Party members. He did not want to believe that Salomon had not been a member. He knew all about the Rathenau murder: ‘lucky for you you did not try to conceal it!’ ‘My dear sir, I’ve written books about it this thick.’

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